Brew Day What Have Ya Got - 2023

[Classic Brewing Co]

52 minutes ago, Brauhaus Fritz said:

Just hot cubed my first AG, but the water calculations didn’t match up. This doesn’t look like 20l. What went wrong or what to do next time?

They do say that the cubes should be full to the top & turned on their side to fully sanitise the tap area. They are capable of holding 21litres plus, I think @Shamus O'Sean said once you can squeeze in 22.

You could have topped it up with water but I have had the same problem trying to work out the software too.

[Brauhaus Fritz]

43 minutes ago, Classic Brewing Co said:

They do say that the cubes should be full to the top & turned on their side to fully sanitise the tap area. They are capable of holding 21litres plus, I think @Shamus O'Sean said once you can squeeze in 22.

You could have topped it up with water but I have had the same problem trying to work out the software too.

I filled the cube with sanitizer beforehand and soaked the lid, and after filling squeezed the cube with tap open until steam escaped and then quickly shut it. Hopefully it worked 

[Aussiekraut]

1 hour ago, Brauhaus Fritz said:

Just hot cubed my first AG, but the water calculations didn’t match up. This doesn’t look like 20l. What went wrong or what to do next time?

About 0.6l/kg is absorbed by the grain, so in your case, that's over 4l. Then there is the boil-off, in my case about 3l/hr. That's already 7+l gone. Do a trial run and boil up 20l of water, boil it for an hour and then see how much you have left. That'll give you an idea of what amounts of water you need to use. It takes a while to figure out your system.

[Brauhaus Fritz]

11 minutes ago, Aussiekraut said:

About 0.6l/kg is absorbed by the grain, so in your case, that's over 4l. Then there is the boil-off, in my case about 3l/hr. That's already 7+l gone. Do a trial run and boil up 20l of water, boil it for an hour and then see how much you have left. That'll give you an idea of what amounts of water you need to use. It takes a while to figure out your system.

Makes sense, but I followed the recipe in Brewfather, thought it would be more or less accurate 

[kmar92]

2 hours ago, Brauhaus Fritz said:

Just hot cubed my first AG, but the water calculations didn’t match up. This doesn’t look like 20l. What went wrong or what to do next time?

Those cubes actually hold about 22 - 23L if they are filled right to the top so the water calculations were possibly pretty close.

[Cheap Charlie]

Today I did my Coopers Non-Genuine Draught Clone recipe. It mostly went smoothly, except when I nearly had a catastrophic boil over!

I followed my recipe, except I added my last hop addition at flameout whirlpool instead.

Mashing in

The boil, note the aftermath of the boil over. A very messy cleanup

Whirlpooling.. I'm not sure if I did it right, I just spun the wort up to a fast speed and it created a vortex. I've never done that before, but it worked.

It was getting late, note to self, start brew day early, not 1:30pm

Hot cubed it, and will have to wait for a couple of weeks before I ferment it, as there is another aussie lager brewing atm. Hopefully this will turn out good, as the hot wort tasted great

[Aussiekraut]

1 hour ago, Cheap Charlie said:

Today I did my Coopers Non-Genuine Draught Clone recipe. It mostly went smoothly, except when I nearly had a catastrophic boil over!

I followed my recipe, except I added my last hop addition at flameout whirlpool instead.

Mashing in

The boil, note the aftermath of the boil over. A very messy cleanup

Whirlpooling.. I'm not sure if I did it right, I just spun the wort up to a fast speed and it created a vortex. I've never done that before, but it worked.

It was getting late, note to self, start brew day early, not 1:30pm

Hot cubed it, and will have to wait for a couple of weeks before I ferment it, as there is another aussie lager brewing atm. Hopefully this will turn out good, as the hot wort tasted great

That's a pretty good whirlpool. Leave it for 20 minutes until all rotation has died down and you'll get a nice cone in the middle and only goodness around it. Well, if you put in your whirl floc in as late as possible that is. 

[RDT2]

Busy couple of days Oatmeal Stout on Thursday for my mate and Brown Porter for me yeasterday! Trying out the London Ale yeast in the Brown porter haven’t used that before. I have made a starter for that one which is meant to give oak esters so can’t wait! Used a couple of hops for original bittering as ran out of Super Pride!

Edited May 20, 2023 by RDT2

[Cheap Charlie]

6 hours ago, Aussiekraut said:

That's a pretty good whirlpool. Leave it for 20 minutes until all rotation has died down and you'll get a nice cone in the middle and only goodness around it. Well, if you put in your whirl floc in as late as possible that is. 

I put the whirlfloc in with 10 minutes to go. Do you think it would be better to put it in at flameout instead?

[Aussiekraut]

5 hours ago, Cheap Charlie said:

I put the whirlfloc in with 10 minutes to go. Do you think it would be better to put it in at flameout instead?

I always used to put it in with around 7-10 minutes to go. But if you then do a hop stand, it will be denatured before you get to a whirlpool. Nowadays I put it in with a minute in the boil if there is no hop stand. If there is, I put it in just before whirlpooling. Since then, I get really nice cones with the break and can even tilt the kettle to get more wort into the cube and no break.

[Cheap Charlie]

@Aussiekraut I will try that next time

[Aussiekraut]

Tried my hand in a Märzen. So far, it looks good. Nice and clear wort and all. I did overshoot pre-boil SG by 10 and OG by 7 points. No idea why.

 

The assistant brewer did a last minute check when the wort went into the cube

 

 

I won’t get to try this until I come back from holidays though

Edited May 21, 2023 by Aussiekraut

[Cheap Charlie]

4 hours ago, Aussiekraut said:

Tried my hand in a Märzen. So far, it looks good. Nice and clear wort and all. I did overshoot pre-boil SG by 10 and OG by 7 points. No idea why.

 

The assistant brewer did a last minute check when the wort went into the cube

 

 

I won’t get to try this until I come back from holidays though

Your effeciency is getting up there, mine by comparison is 67%

 

[Aussiekraut]

3 minutes ago, Cheap Charlie said:

Your effeciency is getting up there, mine by comparison is 67%

 

According to BeerSmith, efficiency on this one was 84.3%. I can't quite figure out why sometimes I'm pretty much spot on, whereas some brews are way over. I thought it might be the mill of the grain but it's not. There is an indication that efficiency is up when the grain bill contains a decent amount of pilsner malt for some reason. Don't ask me why. 

[Brauhaus Fritz]

On 5/20/2023 at 5:24 PM, kmar92 said:

Those cubes actually hold about 22 - 23L if they are filled right to the top so the water calculations were possibly pretty close.

Pitched it today, it's about 18.5 l. As I added an extra 2l to the sparge the water quantities in the recipe were definatly off. The OG was 1074, just two points off, not bad for one year old milled grain. The wort is syrupy sweet with a hint of Coffee bitterness, yum. Pitched it at 19.5 degrees

To add the Cocoa nibs later I want to steep them in my Amburana/French Oak Cachaca, do I have to roast them before?

Edited May 21, 2023 by Brauhaus Fritz

[Cheap Charlie]

6 minutes ago, Aussiekraut said:

According to BeerSmith, efficiency on this one was 84.3%. I can't quite figure out why sometimes I'm pretty much spot on, whereas some brews are way over. I thought it might be the mill of the grain but it's not. There is an indication that efficiency is up when the grain bill contains a decent amount of pilsner malt for some reason. Don't ask me why. 

You're getting good at the craft, I guess many on the online forums and YT would doubt your numbers, and many would say it is BS, but most of the aussie malt producers say minimum 80% extraction, so you are doing really well. By comparison, I set my grainfather recipe at 70 %, and I got 70%.. Still learning my system and I brewed with a little more more water. I will let you know down the track

Yeah, atm I am pretty cr4p, but hopefully I can get 80%+ soon

[kmar92]

6 minutes ago, Brauhaus Fritz said:

Pitched it today, it's about 18.5 l. As I added an extra 2l to the sparge the water quantities in the recipe were definatly off. The OG was 1074, just two points off, not bad for one year old milled grain. The wort is syrupy sweet with a hint of Coffee bitterness, yum. Pitched it at 19.5 degrees

To add the Cocoa nibs later I want to steep them in my Amburana/French Oak Cachaca, do I have to roast them before?

Pretty close @Brauhaus Fritz, especially for your 1st AG brew, you just need to tweak your numbers a tad in Brewfather. The Cacao nibs do not need to be roasted.

[Pale Man]

5 hours ago, Aussiekraut said:

Tried my hand in a Märzen. So far, it looks good. Nice and clear wort and all. I did overshoot pre-boil SG by 10 and OG by 7 points. No idea why.

 

The assistant brewer did a last minute check when the wort went into the cube

 

 

I won’t get to try this until I come back from holidays though

Love ol mate brew dog milling around 

[Shamus O'Sean]

3 hours ago, Aussiekraut said:

According to BeerSmith, efficiency on this one was 84.3%. I can't quite figure out why sometimes I'm pretty much spot on, whereas some brews are way over. I thought it might be the mill of the grain but it's not. There is an indication that efficiency is up when the grain bill contains a decent amount of pilsner malt for some reason. Don't ask me why. 

That's pretty good efficiency.  I have been getting between 75 - 82% with my Grainfather G30.  For ages now I have been stirring the mash three times.  Supposedly, stirring the mash increases efficiency.  However, the last all-grain I did, coincidentally a clone of your Mötley Brëw, I did not stir the mash.  Nevertheless, I got an efficiency of 81%.  Maybe I do not need to stir the mash after all.

If you find you are getting better efficiencies with a particular grain, I would adjust its potential in your software.  I did that with the Coopers Premium Malts.  I think the default setting in Brewfather was 1.034 for each of the Pale, Ale and Wheat Malt.  However, my efficiencies with these malts were well above.  I changed them to 1.038 and my brews with these malts are now closer to the predicted numbers.

[Brauhaus Fritz]

On 5/21/2023 at 1:29 PM, Aussiekraut said:

Tried my hand in a Märzen. So far, it looks good. Nice and clear wort and all. I did overshoot pre-boil SG by 10 and OG by 7 points. No idea why.

 

The assistant brewer did a last minute check when the wort went into the cube

 

 

I won’t get to try this until I come back from holidays though

I am trying to sneak another brew in before wifey is back next week. Thought about a Marzen AG Kit from my LHBS. The set includes Mangrove Jacks M54 California Lager because of the temperatures in March, but they let you swap to a Bavarian or Bohemian Lager Yeast. Which one do you recommend?

[Aussiekraut]

6 minutes ago, Brauhaus Fritz said:

I am trying to sneak another brew in before wifey is back next week. Thought about a Marzen AG Kit from my LHBS. The set includes Mangrove Jacks M54 California Lager because of the temperatures in March, but they let you swap to a Bavarian or Bohemian Lager Yeast. Which one do you recommend?

I used NovaLager in this one because I don't have the usual 3 weeks I ferment my Lagers. Otherwise, I'd have used trusty old Dubbya. The latter is a Weihenstephaner yeast, so it is as Bavarian as they come  But M54 is a good yeast to use. It's not a lager yeast, but IMHO, the result is quite decent. I use it a lot. Whenever there is no time to do the lager properly, M54 is my friend.

 

[Brauhaus Fritz]

AG brew Number two. A Märzen, a recipe from my LHBS. went for the Bohemian lager yeast. Hit the pre-boil gravity on the spot.

[Brauhaus Fritz]

Even the Fairies came to admire the colour 

[Cheap Charlie]

Amazing clear wort!

[Shamus O'Sean]

Pickle Sour Beer

A bit of an experimental beer today.  Garage Project in New Zealand does a Pickle Beer or more specifically a Cucumber Dill Pickle Sour beer.  I found a Pickle Spiced Gose Kombucha Hybrid by another brewer on Brewfather.  So I used that recipe as a basis for my beer.

Doing my usual 30 litre concentrated batch (22 litres of wort plus 8 litres of top-up water in the fermenter).  Aiming for a 4.5% ABV beer.  Hit the numbers:  Pre-boil gravity 1.056.  Post-boil gravity 1.063.  Once I add the 8 litre top-up tomorrow, the Original Gravity should be around 1.046.

• 3.3kg Coopers Premium Pale Malt
• 2.1kg Coopers Premium Wheat Malt
• 350g Acidulated Malt
• 13g Magnum - 50 minute boil - 11 IBU
• 35g Pickle Spice - Lightly ground - 10 minute boil
• 1.5g Chili Powder - 10 minute boil
• 35g Salt - Flame-out
• Philly Sour yeast
• Planning to add a jar of Cucumber Dill Pickle puree toward the end of fermentation.

Had to cube the 22 litres because my 35 litre Snub Nose fermenter, that I want to put this brew into, is full of Mötley Brëw.

The flavour in the sample was around what I was hoping for.  However, quite sweet, that will turn around once fermented.  I think this will turn out alright.

Additions

Nice clear wort post mash

Boil underway, gonna transfer to a cube today

Pickle Spice and Chili Powder addition just added

Transfer to cube underway